Commenting on the evolution of the current use of BCA, the author Emile Quinet writes, "...decision makers became
reconciled to, or even happy with, a situation where they have a tool
which is both sufficiently manipulable to justify discretionary
decisions, and sufficiently obscure to make it hard to criticize."

On the contrary, I would say I'm pleasantly surprised by the degree of transparency I have observed so far in our transportation planning processes.

Even though I think it is an exaggeration to say CBA is in "crises", it is true that there is always room for improvement, and here it is useful to consider Quinet's suggestions. One suggestion is "...the use of general equilibrium models which yield results that are sensitive to assumptions and local circumstances." ( p. 6)

My instinct is to take the opposing side, which is, that we
should continue to strive to make CBA methods simpler and more transparent. I'm not saying that, if for example certain impacts such as land use impacts are massive, then they should not be incorporated into the accounting. And general equilibrium modeling probably does have its place, for example,
in travel demand modeling. But each refinement must be traded off with the costs of additional complexity, for I do agree there is a danger posed by "obscure" and "manipulable" models.

This is a sampler of some of the issues we are currently thinking about. We hope to offer suggestions for improvement that may only require some modest changes. These "patches" will hopefully go a long way to addressing the concerns expressed regarding CBA. We will revisit and exand on these ideas when we release a draft report in the months ahead.